On December 22, news came that this week Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer and head of the Reality Labs XR team, expressed his views on whether wireless computing units are suitable for standalone VR headsets during his Instagram Q&A session. He believes that for Meta’s standalone VR devices, a similar design is not an ideal solution. Bosworth explained that Meta has studied the wireless computing unit scheme many times, but the results show that this scheme cannot effectively solve the problem.
“Even with a wireless design, the headset itself still needs battery power, and the battery is the main source of the headset’s weight.” He pointed out, “Admittedly, this design can provide more heat dissipation space and theoretically can improve performance, but it is also limited by wireless bandwidth.” In addition to technical obstacles, Meta pays more attention to creating products for mass consumers. The latest 128GB version of Quest 3S is priced as low as 300 US dollars (Note: currently about 2189 yuan). Bosworth added: “Using a wireless computing unit will significantly increase costs. Even if the main chip is located in the wireless computing unit, the headset itself still needs a considerable number of chips to drive the display, perform necessary local corrections, and process data streams. Therefore, the final result is not ideal. In short, this scheme cannot significantly reduce weight but will greatly increase cost and complexity.” It is worth noting that Meta’s Orion AR glasses prototype does use a wireless computing unit. However, Orion will not be mass-produced due to extremely high production costs (reportedly, due to difficult-to-produce silicon carbide lenses, the unit cost is as high as 10,000 US dollars). But this shows that in some cases, wireless computing units do have their uses, especially when providing less immersive graphic displays for AR glasses. Bosworth had previously said that the price of Meta’s first AR glasses for consumers after they go on the market will not be as affordable as the Quest series. As early as September this year, he had said that this device “will not be cheap”, but the company is committed to keeping its price at “at least at the same level as a mobile phone or laptop”. Advertising statement: The external jump links contained in the article (including but not limited to hyperlinks, QR codes, passwords and other forms) are used to transmit more information and save selection time. The results are for reference only. All articles contain this statement.
